Joseph Gordon-Levitt insists he's not out to change the world, or even Hollywood, but he just may accomplish at least one of those as he expands his presence from actor, to director, to producer and the benevolent dictator/creator of the terrifically addictive Pivot TV show "HITRECORDonTV," premiering Saturday night.

The show grew out of a small project he and his late older brother, Daniel, launched in 2005 as a place for Joe to post songs, small videos and other creative projects. The site grew into a small community and led to the launch of the HitRECord website in 2010 to create art through collaborative participation. The TV show is already picked up for a second season.

Viewers will find an eclectic mix of films, music, animation, comedy and more in the half-hour episodes, hosted by Gordon-Levitt, who accompanies himself on piano, crooning a new ballad in Saturday's premiere. The theme of the first show is the No. 1 . The highlight is a stunning short film about a young woman who has a vision problem that's always prevented her from seeing the sky. Her father is determined to remedy that, so he gets a pair of old Soviet-era night-vision goggles and adapts them to help his daughter see the stars for the first time in her life.

The show meant enough to its creator that he essentially took an entire year off from his other career to work out all the kinks in 2013. The only work he did was some press for the film he directed and starred in, "Don Jon," and a week working with director Robert Rodriguez on "Sin City."

All of that is changing, of course, because he's signed on to work with author Neil Gaiman on the film adaptation of the Sandman comic books. So far, he's "just" producing the film, but there's a lot of speculation he may either direct or star in it. Or, given that he's Hollywood's most dedicated polymath, both.

Gordon-Levitt first came to prominence as the supersmart long-haired kid alien on "3rd Rock From the Sun." After a small career break, he had trouble finding work again. He made some interesting and profound choices back then, films like "Mysterious Skin," Gregg Araki's gritty adaptation of Scott Heim's novel about a teenage hustler, the possibility of alien abduction and repressed memories of child abuse. That film, and "Brick," about a teenager investigating the disappearance of his girlfriend, signaled a new career direction for the former child actor, but they mirrored the start of a pivotal period in his life as well.

"I realized I had to take responsibility for my own creativity," he said during an interview last week at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour. "I can't wait around for someone to hire me and tell me that I'm allowed to make things. The 'record' button, the red circle, became a symbol for that." And "hit record" was the phrase he'd focus on in his head to push forward.

"My parents brought up my brother and me with ideas that some might consider revolutionary," he said. "It's good to share, it's good to understand that you're a part of something larger than yourself."

Collaborative process

The dichotomy of HitRECord and the TV show is that people from all over the world submit a project or an idea, or part of a project. They may be looking for something specific. A composer may have a melody but needs lyrics. Perhaps an animator has an idea for a short film and needs voice actors to help realize it. A musician may post a performance and others may remix or add to it.

The process is almost entirely collaborative. There's the creative part, and there's the finished project part. But in the middle is one person deciding what to put on the TV show. That would be Gordon-Levitt.

"It needs to be somebody - that's a big part of it," he said. "That there's one individual person who's directing the whole thing. That's the balance I'm always trying to strike. Once you don't have that voice, it's chaos or corporate, committee boringness."

When you agree to participate in a HitRECord project, you OK nonexclusive rights to your material. You still retain the rights to the part of the project you contributed, but all the other stuff that may be done to it becomes the property of HitRECord.

Everyone gets paid

And everyone gets paid, if they participated in a project that gets used or is on the TV show. That's where it gets complicated. There were 426 contributing artists for the projects you'll see in Saturday's premiere of the TV show. HitRECord will figure out a payment scheme, based on a subjective judgment of the value of each contribution.

But wait, there's more, as they say in cheesy TV ads: The payment proposal is then posted for a couple of weeks to allow people to respond, reject, make suggestions of who might merit more money and who might be getting overpaid. Once the final payment plan is approved, it is made public as well.

The first year of the website project, HitRECord paid $40,000 to contributors. That number went up to $100,000 the next year (2011) and $400,000 in 2012.

The money comes from what Gordon-Levitt calls the "HitRECord Accord" establishing that if a project makes money, half goes back into HitRECord and the other half is divvied up among contributors.

Artists from all over

Gordon-Levitt, who turns 33 next month, says he's not interested in whether people follow in his footsteps or that he's seen as a pioneer for 21st century media, but he is excited by the impact the Internet is having on media and entertainment.

"Twentieth-century broadcast media put us all in a situation where a small, exclusive industry created everything, and everyone else in the world had to just sit and watch. Now with the Internet, people can participate.

"Who doesn't like the idea of allowing great artists from all over the world to come together and work together and have an audience?"